New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

Another Song for Clare

I wove a song for Clare, tonight
when the stars were bright, yet wan
against the horizon's paling edge
where the sun rises past the lake-set sedge,
and where the geese worship the morning light
along with the swan;
I wove a song for Clare, tonight
when the stars were bright, yet wan.

*****

Another Sonnet (for Clare)

I could easily, and happily, spend
all day and every day watching your face,
the way some men spend all day and every
day watching the skies, through a wide plate glass
window, against which a summer fly butts
its head, again and again, while the dust
glissades along slow shafts of sunlight, like
clouds over the face of the earth's ovals.

I have spent many lazy hours lying
on my back in the Liddiard Road school
oval, watching the clouds above me, while,
like a chattering presage of summer,
the other kids are playing cricket, with
a ball with a red I remember still.

*****

August (for Clare)

I am deep in winter, with a cold breeze
walking across my back, and addressing
the palms outside of my window. The sea
is faint to my ears, as I pause my pen
from writing, and easily find a rhyme
for the sonnet that's sinking over faint
blue-lined paper, then open a moment
to breathe, and to write a message of peace.

This message I write, it is mainly verse,
it is mainly rhythmic, and mainly vain
as well, knowing that nothing written means
what the writer dreams, but reader only,
not novel, not drama, not poem nor prose,
not knowing if dreams are alive, will lift.


- Phillip Ellis 2011

Phillip Ellis is the editor of Australian Reader and author of The Flayed Man: http://www.amazon.com